


(Ohana means Family) And family means no one gets left behind or forgotten

by Anonymous



Series: Mutant Manor redefined [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Adopted Siblings, Alternate universe-Raven choses a different path, Alternate universe-Staying with family, Angst, Bossy!Mystique, Drama, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Hank is a good boyfriend, Mentions of Violence, Mystique takes command, Ohana, Raven and Hank work on their self-esteem and self-image issues together, Raven is a good sister, Siblings, THE AUTHOR DOESN't EVEN KNOW, The Author Regrets Nothing, This is crazy seriously, alternate beach divorce, and Charles is a better brother, sorta fix-it fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family  means no one gets left behind or forgotten, or it should in any case. Raven and Charles are family, albeit by choice, not by blood.  Charles is basically Raven's only family, and Raven is basically Charles' only family. Why would either one of them forget that and leave the other behind?  Maybe that was what she had chosen to do in another world, and another life, but not in this one. In this world she stayed with Charles and helped his vision come to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Disaster Strikes and family is more important than anything else

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Raven_First_Class](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Raven_First_Class) collection. 



"Charles!" His name was a deafening scream ripped from her lips before she even realized that it was her own voice screaming the name of the young man who was, for all practical intents and purposes, her brother. Raven stared,horrified, unable to move or to do anything but watch, frozen to the spot where she stood, as the bullet that CIA Agent Moira McTaggert had fired to stop Erik came to rest in Charles' back. Her hands were at her mouth and she could feel herself shaking. She screamed again after the missiles fell and stared in horror at Charles's crumpled form and his pained expression, "Charles!" That was the only word her lips could form in that horrible, antagozing moment. 

"You!" Erik turned on Moira and Raven felt anger towards the CIA agent, for the first time since she'd met her. "*You* did this!" The metal manipulator continued, accusing Moira . But Raven was only a quarter aware of what was occurring on the beach. She was completely focused on her brother's state. Memories flashed though her mind, from all the years that she'd been Charles's sister, starting with that first night in the Xavier manor house and ending with the night before the flight down to this beach. She projected them to Charles by sheer force of will. He'd taught her how to project years ago, even though it was mostly just about thinking loudly, at least in her case because she wasn't a telepath like her (for all intents and purposes) brother. She ran to his side and knelt by his head, cradling it in her lap, and said, begging him with a voice full of sorrow and pain, "Charles, please, please don't leave me. Please, please, please! You're the only family I have. Please, please, please, stay with me! You're my brother and I need you. I.. I.. I love you. I know I don't say it enough but I do." 

Tears were flowing down her cheeks now and she couldn't stop them. Charles was her rock, the one constant in her life since they met all those years ago, when they were both 9, although she had been so much smaller than he had been. He was her pillar of strength, she needed him alive, with her, running the Xavier family home (she was only an Xavier by adoption, not birth, without him, she could lose the estate, not that she cared for the estate), and telling her stupid, wonderful brotherly things. Raven wouldn't let him die on her watch, and she told him so, "Charles, I absolutely forbid you to die, brother of mine. do you hear me? You are not allowed to die. Absolutely not allowed to die! Please, don't die on me, brother. I need you with me. " Her tears was still falling as she pressed her lips to his forehead and ghosted a soft kiss on it. When she felt a hand on her shoulder, she looked up. Hank was standing behind her and Alex and Sean behind him. He spoke, slowly and calmly, as though she was a small, panicked child who just needed to be reasoned with," I'm sure Charles will be fine, Raven. You need to breathe and calm down. You're not helping anyone by being hysterical." Then Charles spoke, and his words broke her heart, "I can't feel my legs." "Oh, Charles. I am so sorry. Hank, can you get the jet in the air?" She glanced at Hank who shook his head sadly, "No, Raven, I can't. Not as fast as you would like." She slowly slid her legs out from under Charles’s head and gently placed his head back on the sand, trying not to get too much sand in his hair and then stood up. Raven started running, she knew what Charles needed was a hospital; their jet wasn't in any condition to fly, and Hank couldn't fix it fast enough, that left only the teleporting red-skinned, tailed, devil-looking mutant man who had worked for Shaw as a means of transportation. She crossed the hot sand quickly and grabbed his collar when she reached him, "You! You will take Charles and I to the closest US hospital and drop us off at the entrance. Now." She dragged him behind her all the way back to Charles and told him, "We're going to get you out of here, Charles. Trust me." Glaring at Agent McTaggert, Raven said, "I agree with Erik, this is all your fault. You did this. I'd say 'stay away from my brother and I' but that isn't my call to make, it's Charles' call. So all I will say to you is this: I don't like you. I never really have." 

Erik started ranting about how society would never accept them and how they should form their own, but once again Raven's focus was still on Charles. She spoke, her voice ringing with authority she never thought she’d have, authority that, in her mind, properly belonged to Charles, but Charles was unable to lead and as his oldest friend and sister, she felt she was responsible to get the team to safety and Charles to medical care, whether her field position allowed for her to take leadership or not, “Hank! Help me. We can’t just leave him here to die or have whatever is going to happen to him happen. I won’t stand for it. Erik, make your choice, you’re either with us or against us. We can stand united as one, or we can fall divided.” Erik continued rambling on, saying something about how mutants were all brothers and how he wanted Charles by his side. At this, Raven sighed, “No, we’re not, Erik. And if this is how you truly feel, we never were. Why I even gave you that one night, I don’t know anymore.”  
He looked at her and held out his hand, imploringly but she shook her head, even when Charles said, “Go with him... I know you want to.” She sobbed, shaking her head, “You promised me you’d never read my mind. I want to stay with **you**. You’re my brother and that matters more than anything else.” Charles said, panting for breath with each word, “ I didn’t have to. I.. promised you a ..lot of things, Raven.” She nodded, “You did, and I’m going to help you keep those promises, brother mine. Now Erik, if you’re not with us, then you are against us. And as for you three,” she paused and indicated Shaw’s teleporter, the other mutant Shaw had employed and Angel, “If you want a place of safety, come with us. Otherwise, go with Erik and wage war but we will be there to fight you every step of the way.” She turned her back to erik, glanced at Alex, Sean and Hank and said, “Well, are you coming? Charles is going to need us, all of us.” Then and only, then did Raven spare a single look at Moira , and said, “You, of course, are coming with us. Leaving you here would be just plain wrong and no matter how I feel about you, I won’t leave you behind to suffer at their hands” she jerked her chin to indicate Erik and the others. Then Raven said, “Hank, pick Charles up now. We’re leaving. Azazel, it’s time. Alex, Sean, McTaggert, hold hands.” Hank, though with a stunned look on his face, said, “Raven, it’s not smart to move Charles now. Spinal injuries can be made worse by moving the injured person. But I guess we don’t have a choice.” He bent and carefully picked up Charles, cradling him in his arms. When he stood straight again, Hank linked her right arm though his left, positioning herself at Charles’s head. When Moira , Alex and Sean join them, she smiles brokenly, half-hearted and says to Azazel who holds her other hand, “It’s time. Get us to the nearest US hospital and then go back for the others and do whatever you are going to do with your life.” They disappear in a puff of red smoke and the last sight Raven Darkholme-Xavier has of the beach in Cuba is of Erik’s face, broken and raw and she thinks, _He’s wrong. He’s so wrong. He’s not at all good for me, or for Charles or any of us. It’s better this way. _and maybe it is and their lives will be simpler for cutting Erik Lennsherr out of them but maybe not. None of them have any way of knowing the future. They are gifted in a myriad of ways, but none of them have visions of the past or future. If Raven had known this was how the day would end, she would have advocated doing nothing to stop the crisis.__

Yet, the girl couldn't possibly think or know that in another life, she would leave Charles there on the sand, unable to walk, bleeding and broken, to join Erik in his mad quest to take over the world and subjugate humans. That in another life, she told Hank in parting, "And Beast! Always remember, 'Mutant and Proud!'" That in another life, she walked away from her only family and never regretted it for one moment ever again 


	2. Facing (and Planning for) the Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles wakes up in hospital and Raven is there, of course she is there and she starts talking about the future and the things they could do with the family fortune and the estate and everything. Also a little bit of a lecture about the things that went down on the Beach prior to the split.

"Raven?" Her name ( it was such a simple thing, she’d think looking back years and years later after the unthinkable happened and Charles was lost to them, that woke her) sounded weak, thin, and groggy, woke her from her half slumber, but still so familial and right, coming from Charles as he woke up. "Charles! You're awake!" She said, laughing at her own silly words. Of course he was awake. "I've sat here the whole time you've been asleep. Even after visiting hours ended, I was here. The nurses tried to kick me out but I wouldn't go. I had to be here when you woke up." She stood from the uncomfortable hospital chair, walked over to his bedside and leaned down and hugged him tight before climbing gingerly into the bed and laid beside him. "The boys have been worried about you," she told him, "Hank's been keeping the other two in line at the hotel. He's been calling a lot from their room. Erik is still gone, I'm sorry, but not too much. He is not thinking clearly anymore. But seriously, Charles? Telling him ‘they’re just following orders’? HE survived the concentration camps, Charles! ‘they’re just following orders’ was the number one explanation given if any explanation at all was given in those places. Did you really think saying those words to him would end things on a good note? Agent McTaggert has been pacing the waiting room, waiting for any word. " 

She rested her head on his shoulder and cried, "I was so worried we'd lose you and then fall apart. You're keeping us together, Charles." She sighed and whispered, "You know that promise I made you make about not reading my mind? Forget it. I was a selfish immature kid when I made you make that promise. We need to forget about it,” She paused and wiped a tear from her face, “I want you to see what I want my future to be. To see what I want our future to be." She placed a hand on his forehead, giving him a non-verbal go ahead to read her. She closed her eyes and pictured the Xavier estate, filled to bursting with mutant children, some of them with physical mutations that made it impossible for them to blend in, and others who could pass for human. She pictured teachers, the current 'class' grown up and teaching the next generation to use their powers wisely and giving them a proper education. She pictured the team, expanded and changing over the years, but always there to protect a world that would never truly understand them. She pictured turning the estate into a school, a school for mutants, although they'd have to hide the true purpose from the world at large. She pictured going on 'recruiting' trips with him, gathering mutants to their little home, their school, giving them purpose and new hope. And yes, she pictured some kids of her own, growing up on the estate, happy and safe, and protected and loved, like she hadn't been until Charles and she had met and become family. 

‘Oh, Raven,’’ the thought is Charles, and she finds herself feeling hope for the first time since that afternoon on the beach in Cuba when she washed Charles be shot down. She says, sure of herself and of her only half thought out plan for the future of their family estate, "This is what we need to do Charles, the family fortune can be used for this. It's the right thing to do. I'm sure Hank can rebuild Cerebro and maybe even the jet, and we can locate and gather more mutants to our home. We can be more than just ourselves, we can be a force for good in this world. We can find a purpose and a Dream and a Legacy and a Reason to protect people who will never really trust us or understand us. It's possible. I might not want to protect the pretty humans but I'm going to, because Erik's ideas are crazy and I want no part of them. It would mean losing you, and I can't, I won't do that to us. You're all I have got, and no matter what, I will stand by you. I will protect you and help you and love you like a little sister should. This is what I think we need to do. What has to be done to make the world better." 

She smiled and laughed, but the sound was hollow and her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘This isn’t how I imagined the adventure in Cuba ending,’ she thinks and Charles’ mental voice is soft in her head, ‘I know, my sister, I know. I never pictured it ending this way either. I thought we’d stop the missiles and return to the mansion as a group. I never thought we could split like this or that Erik would kill Shaw and take his helmet and just completely lose all of his goodness.’ Raven sighs at the last statement and sends back the thought, ‘to be honest, Charles, I don’t think Erik would have made a different decision no matter what we did. He made his choices and his bed, now he has to live with them and lie in it. And we have to pick up the pieces of our broken lives and carry on as best we can.’ 


End file.
